Yeah, what he said...

So i finished reading "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck last night. i'm so glad my mother recommended it to me a few months or so back. yes, i should have read it years ago, and yes, i know it's on Netflix and I plan to watch it; but I always try to read the book before i watch the movie. I like using my own imagination first. I'm sure Florence Pugh plays a killer Cathy Ames and all, but i kinda like how i have her pictured in my mind right now. anyway, like many classic novels, this one has a hold on me. i'm going to read it again just so i can digest it more and without feeling like i need to find out what happens. there's so many layers and so much to be gleaned from his writing and this story. i am ordering a hard back copy so i can earmark pages. but what i wanted to point out in this blog is what he said in his afterward, because i believe it really matters, especially in today's world.

"...but there is one purpose in writing that i can see, beyond simply doing it interestingly. it is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. if the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. and how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature i do not know. it is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would milleniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth, a few remnants of fossilized jaw bones, a few teeth in strata of limestone would be the only mark our species would have left on the earth. now this i must say and say right here and so sharply and so memorable that it will not be forgotten in the rather terrible and disheartening things which are to come in this book; so that although east of eden is not eden, it is not insuperably far away." John Steinbeck